Bedazzled

Why mess with a good thing? That's the resounding question raised by this Hollywood remake of the 1967 Dudley Moore-Peter Cook British comedy gem. All remakes, in fact, should arouse healthy suspicion at the outset. If, however, the viewer leaves the theatre still asking “Why?” and can't see any significant differences in interpretation (either successful or failed) then the remake can be said to be a craven misfire, a calculated attempt to cash in on other people's ingenuity and talent. And even though imitation may be regarded as a form of flattery, Hollywood just doesn't qualify as a flattery-starved town. Be that as it may, this second Bedazzled hardly lives up to its name -- bedeviled is more like it. A modern Faust tale, both Bedazzleds tell the story of a nerdy guy who is granted seven wishes by the devil in exchange for his soul. What each guy desires is to win the girl (in this case played by Mansfield Park's Frances O'Connor), but in each wish scenario he dreams up, an important element has been left out. The devil is always in the details. The fun part of the story is always seeing how the hapless young man behaves when thrown into the various studly scenarios he invents for himself. This time out Brendan Fraser ably plays the Faust character, Elliot Richards. The actor's talent for amiability lends itself well to the various episodes in which he mutates from being a socially oblivious nebbish into various rich and powerful guises (to reveal them here would be to spoil some of the film's only fun -- but if you've seen the trailers, you can guess the results of most of his transformations). Hurley plays a sexy Beelzebub, shilling for the underworld as if she were hawking some new beauty product. She delights in her vampish come-ons, and pertly bounces through all her scenes with physical gusto. She clearly relishes the role, but the uniformity of her performance consequently inflicts the movie with a certain monotony. Wish, tease; wish, tease; wish, tease; and on and on it goes until the film reaches its ultra-sweet conclusion, which seems a tacked-on afterthought. The original Bedazzled, although focusing on sex humor (Raquel Welch was one of its chief gags), still managed to convey a deliciously wicked charm. The new one carries over some of those moments -- like the prankishness of the devil's sense of humor in which he/she causes parking meters to click over to “Expired” at the snap of his/her fingers -- but, on the whole, the new Bedazzled emphasizes the vamp over the camp. But if you like your movies to play as though they were feature-length perfume commercials, then Bedazzled earns a spot as this season's newest scent.